Sonar Songs

Sonar Songs is a question, perhaps an answer, but mostly, a letter forged from heat and light and love …

Sonar Songs

Often, I find myself writing,
galvanized by others’ love
of the ineffable, as though
together we inhabit
some oceanic space
from which we are sounding
a call and response –
like larger-than-life whales
seeding the ocean with
sonar cries from life’s depths
– its being and becoming –
while just trying to figure out
where in the world we all are.

On the other hand,
I think of newborn kittens 
blinking in near blindness,
still clumsy,
learning swift U-turns
when nabbed by the scruff
by some marvelous mother
grand in maternal ferocity –
yet exquisitely gentle – with 
wisdom teeth that shake us,
as we scramble and scratch
– helpless claws pawing empty air – 
reaching and resistant, both,
when carried toward that
suspense of Somewhere Else – 
places we’ve never before known.

Surely, we are light –
glistening shards
reflecting that which
neither can be voiced
nor captured – only felt,
mirrored,
pointed toward.
Surely,
all together we are
more than capable of
casting our light jointly,
revealing, with one accord,
those astronomical nadirs of
collective human sorrow, 
our apexes of splendor.

We can, once again,
find one another
with sonar songs
and lodestars acting as
earthborn buoys and beacons,
homing-devices of every kind
– here –
on this one rollicking planet
in the middle of a star system
swimming in a sea of
heat-and-light brilliance.  

I pray for a soul large enough
to bridge the gaps of soullessness
bred into us, through chasms
of colorless cultural pursuits,
and endless oceans of wreckage
that drown and choke
our natural navigation systems
desperately trying to tell us
which way is home. 

I plead for mystery to outshine mastery,
for heaven to overcome hell and
light to eclipse darkness.

How will we ever really know 
that we are synergetic beings
born of brilliance and sound,
ferocious fragments 
still alive
inside these oceanic bodies,
that only truly can express
enigmas of love and life
once we are willing to inhabit
our shared pod – 
sounding our sightless way
through immense billows
of bewilderment and wonder.


Janet D. Coster